NSW announces $73 million Stolen Generations redress scheme

Hannah Busch
eatures and Special Publications Editor
Hannah began writing for APN newspapers in Hervey Bay and Maryborough in 2011, writing about everything from the prize-winning sausages to murder trials. She joined the team at the Queensland Times in early 2014 as editor of City Heart and Roughin It magazines.

SURVIVORS of the Stolen Generations in New South Wales will have access to a $73 million compensation scheme.

The scheme was announced on Friday and aims to redress the harm caused to Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families for decades.

NSW is now the third state in Australia to fund a redress scheme for the Stolen Generations.

The scheme will fund both one-off payments to victims and Stolen Generations organisations.

"With this response, the NSW Government officially acknowledges the real and heartbreaking trauma caused by historic government policies and practices of removing Aboriginal children from their kin and country," NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Leslie Williams said.

She tabled the NSW Government's response to the Parliamentary Committee Inquiry into Reparations for the Stolen Generations in parliament today.

"We have accepted the vast majority of the Parliamentary Committee's recommendations and together with the Premier I will establish a Stolen Generations advisory committee to ensure our response is implemented swiftly, effectively and respectfully but most importantly in partnership with Aboriginal people," she said.

The 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generations found as many as one in three Aboriginal children were removed from their families under government policy that lasted for 60 years.

"Nationally we can conclude with confidence that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970," the report said.

"In certain regions and in certain periods the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in ten.

"In that time not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects of forcible removal."